Professor wants hide-and-seek at Olympics

Tokyo At 64, Yasuo Hazaki admits he may no longer have the speed of an Olympic athlete, but guile is as important an attribute in his chosen sport – competitive hide-and-seek – and he is lobbying hard for it to be included in the 2020 Games.

The International Olympic Committee is due to announce the host city for the XXXII Olympiad at its meeting in Buenos Aires on Saturday, with Tokyo competing with Istanbul and Madrid for the right to host the largest sporting event in the world.

And Mr Hazaki, a graduate of Nippon Sport Science University, believes Tokyo 2020 would be the perfect occasion for the Olympic community to embrace his chosen sport.

“I would like hide-and-seek to be one of the exhibition sports in 2020 and then it could become an official event at subsequent Olympics," said Mr Hazaki, a professor of media studies at Josai International University.

Mr Hazaki set up the Japan Hide-and-Seek Promotion Committee in 2010 and the organisation has around 1000 members. Many are university students, but the sport can be enjoyed by anyone, he emphasises.

“I want to encourage sport for all, meaning that anyone can take part, regardless of age, gender or ability," said Mr Hazaki. “When you watch sport now, it’s all about world-beating techniques and skills – fantastic dribbling, running or shooting skills in football, for example.

“But that’s not sport for all. Hide-and-seek is a sport that anybody can play, from children as young as four years old to someone who is in their 80s."

‘I see Tokyo 2020 as our big chance’

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The committee has set formal rules for competitive hide-and-seek, pitting two teams of seven players against each other in a 10-minute match. In the first five-minute half, one team is given two minutes to hide on a “pitch" that measures 20 metres by 20 metres. The opposing team then has to locate and touch the hiding players.

In the version for children under the age of 12, the pitch measures 17 metres by 27 metres.

One of the beauties of the sport is that it can be played pretty much anywhere, Mr Hazaki said, although light woodland tends to offer the best opportunities for the hiding team. He has, however, staged contests in gardens and on beaches – a sporting experience that he described as “interesting".

Successful players generally have the ability to run very fast at the start of the game to put some distance between themselves and the seekers.

Being able to identify a good hiding spot is obviously critical, as well as being able to keep very still. That becomes more difficult if the pitch has a lot of mosquitoes or other insects.

“We are trying to arrange games all across Japan so many people can play, to see how much fun it is and that anyone can play," Mr Hazaki said.

“It may be difficult to get hide-and-seek into the Olympics – the IOC just kicked wrestling out, and [it] has been around for a long time – but I see Tokyo 2020 as our big chance," he said.